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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25752142">you told me you loved me (so why did you go)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/legobatmanshusband/pseuds/legobatmanshusband'>legobatmanshusband</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Torchwood</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Character Death, Grief/Mourning, Immortality, Introspection, Jack Angst, M/M, Memories, References to BF: Before the Fall, references to Ianto's past</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-06</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 04:01:25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,358</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25752142</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/legobatmanshusband/pseuds/legobatmanshusband</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>" so i watch your life in pictures like i used to watch you sleep ,  and i feel you forget me like i used to feel you breathe . "</p><p> </p><p>jack finds himself drowning in the memories of a young man he'd once loved</p><p> </p><p>*canon-typical character death<br/>( title + lyrics from last kiss - taylor swift )</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Jack Harkness/Ianto Jones</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>26</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>you told me you loved me (so why did you go)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>" all that i know is i don't<br/>know<br/>how to be something you'd miss<br/>never thought<br/>we'd have a last kiss<br/>never imagined we'd end<br/>like this<br/>your name forever the name<br/>on my lips "</p><p>( this is a short one :) )</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>" i still remember the look on your face</em><br/>
<em>lit through the darkness at 1:58</em><br/>
<em>the words that you whispered</em><br/>
<em>for just us to know</em><br/>
<em>you told me you loved me</em><br/>
<em>so why did you go</em><br/>
<em>away "</em>
</p><p>Raindrops slid like ballet dancers down the windows, dodging and twirling around each other, pooling at the bottom and dripping down, soaking the brickwork. Jack Harkness stood in the middle of a flat he once knew quite well, but now felt like another world, another life. Boxes littered the floor, some packed up with sticky tape and marked with sharpies, some half-opened and overflowing with objects that had once been <em>possessions</em>.</p><p>He hadn’t taken off his shoes or coat when he came inside. He knew it wasn’t going to make a difference. This wasn’t <em>Ianto’s</em> flat anymore. There weren’t any silk shirts hanging in the closet or old Bond and Star Wars DVDs shoved in the cabinet below the television. The space didn’t smell like fresh coffee like he remembered it. The walls looked greyer, and he now noticed the places where the paint peeled in the corners.</p><p>The memories of a young man were the saddest to gaze upon, because there were so few of them. The world had only given Ianto Jones twenty-six years. Twenty-six years that he’d filled with work and films and coffee and Torchwood and Lisa and <em>Jack</em>.</p><p>Jack had gotten to become part of this young man’s strange little world, if only for a moment, a small blip in his endless existence, and he didn’t think he’d ever feel that sort of happiness before. Jack knew that when you got to the age that he was, you started going numb to all the death and destruction and change you saw. Ianto Jones had taught Jack what loss felt like again.</p><p>And he kind of hated him for it.</p><p>No, that wasn’t right. He hated himself. He hated himself for having fallen in love with such a young, violent spirit. For holding on to a love he knew would never last after all the death he’d seen. For letting Ianto follow him into Thames House, his loyalty to Torchwood seemingly one of the only constants in his life.</p><p>Jack closed his eyes and imagined the flat as it had been before, and for a terrifying moment, he realized his memory was already lapsing. He could barely feel the warm glow of the lamplight, the feeling of Ianto’s body against his, the taste of his mouth after a long day and several cups of coffee. Desperately, Jack collected all the memories, all the emotions, and shoved them into a compartment of his brain, sealing it tight.</p><p>But they were fading. Ianto was fading. Soon he’d be another name, another chipped-off piece of Jack Harkness’s immortal heart. He couldn’t let that happen. He <em>wouldn’t</em> let that happen.</p><p>Jack opened his eyes and pushed past a stack of boxes to Ianto’s bedroom. The door had been left ajar. Ianto hated when Jack left the door open, so he entered the room and closed it, as if to respect the wishes of a man who no longer lived there.</p><p>The bedroom was one of the only areas that hadn’t been packed up yet. It looked so much smaller to Jack as he stood there, feeling oddly formal in his coat and boots. He removed them, set them neatly by the doorframe, and sat down on the bed. This room had been ransacked by the government when Torchwood had been on the run, and now it looked an utter mess. Ianto would not have approved of that. Jack had the unshakable urge to tidy it all up, keep it just as its owner had. Straighten out the sheets and put all the clothes back on the hangers. Put the books back in alphabetical order.</p><p>But he could hardly move. The room smelled like Ianto. Like coffee and linen and sweaty midnight sex. Jack couldn’t help the tears that slid down his cheeks. In another time, there were hands wrapping around his stomach, kisses pressed to his shoulder. A sense of safety and vulnerability all at once.</p><p>That’s when Jack noticed a box sticking out of the closet, half-obscured by a crimson button-down. Jack pulled it from the floor and sat it on the bed. It was a rather large box, sort of like a moving box, but it wasn’t like all the others. He presumed it had been there for a long while, considering the film of dust covering the top.</p><p>Jack pried the box open carefully with his thumbnail and opened it. Inside was a stack of photographs, some framed and some not, and several books that looked like journals. Jack pulled out the first photograph. It was unframed.</p><p>It was one he’d seen before. In fact, it was one he’d <em>taken</em>. And it depicted Ianto and Gwen standing in the low light of Roald Dahl Plass at night, arm in arm, and smiling at the camera. Ianto looked disheveled and mid eye-roll, but his smile was genuine. Jack had taken the picture on a night they’d all gone out together as a bit of celebration.</p><p>The next photo was one of Toshiko and Owen. They were both smiling, looking happier than they ever had. Jack felt his heart wrench at the thought of Ianto storing this picture away to remember his friends.</p><p>Jack looked through the remaining photographs. There was one of Ianto and Lisa on a picnic, and one of the two of them kissing, presumably taken by someone else. Jack looked further and found framed photos of a young Ianto with his arms around two women, both smiling and sitting in what looked like an office. There was a visible smudge over one woman’s face where Ianto had traced it with his fingertip. She had probably died, Jack thought. He carefully removed the photo from the frame and turned it over.</p><p>
  <em>Pippa, Ianto, and Guleraana- TW1 Christmas Party ‘05</em>
</p><p>Jack remembered Ianto telling him about some of the people he used to work with at Torchwood One. About the ladies who’d taken him in as their surrogate Welsh son. About all his friends and the people who cared for him and the people who worked late hours so he could get home. <em>All those people were dead now</em>. And so was Ianto. Jack stifled an oncoming sob and set the pictures down.</p><p>The journals were all full, he realized quickly, and neatly written on the first page of each was the date when he had started writing in them and the day he had stopped. They went back years, even before he joined Torchwood. It was so Ianto, Jack thought, to have kept all his journals in a box he probably never looked through. Jack picked up one of the diaries- bound tightly with a leather cover, but looking worn on the edges. He could barely bring himself to read the words of his dead lover. Words he wasn’t supposed to read. Secrets that had died with Ianto. A passage caught his eye suddenly. It was scrawled in a slightly messier version of Ianto’s handwriting, the first few lines of a poem Jack recognized.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done, </em>
</p><p>
  <em>The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won, </em>
</p><p>
  <em>The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting, </em>
</p><p>
  <em>While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring; </em>
</p><p>
  <em>But O heart! heart! heart! </em>
</p><p>
  <em>O the bleeding drops of red, </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Where on the deck my Captain lies, </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Fallen cold and dead. </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>- Walt Whitman </em>
</p><p> </p><p>Jack closed the journal, holding it close to his chest as he wept silently. Wept for all those he had lost, but mostly for the man who sought to understand him, and died in doing so. The man whose flat was packed up in boxes like his life was little more than tea mugs and old sofas. The man he’d promised the world to, but let die saving it.</p><p>“I’m sorry, Ianto,” Jack said quietly, the words echoing through the empty flat. “I’m so sorry.”</p><p> </p>
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